Read Caught for Free Online

a man who spent long nights getting smudged with long-wearing lipstick by women who were not his girlfriend.
    “Boyfriend?” She brushed past him and continued her circuit of the room.
    He shot her a droll look. “So where is it?”
    So he’d noticed that minor detail, too. Kara’s MacBook was nowhere to be seen. “Not where I thought it would be.”
    “Oh, so you can admit you were wrong.”
    Toni tipped her chin up to glare at him. He was standing way too close for her comfort. He seemed to loom over her, the sheer size and force of him threatening to overwhelm her.
    Not that she felt threatened, exactly, but while she was only a few inches shy of him in height, he had at least eighty pounds on her, all of it rock-solid muscle. And the way he held his body in an almost predatory manner hinted at a dangerous core under his charming facade.
    She wasn’t about to let him see that she noticed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
    His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared as he glared down at her. “Just that you seem like the type who would think she’s right most of the time.”
    He inched so close she was afraid he’d feel the hard points of her nipples poking through her shirt. God, she was desperate. Kara’s immense room shrank in size as Ethan’s huge frame seemed to suck up all the space. “That’s because I am,” she quipped. Without waiting for his reply, she brushed past him and headed back to the kitchen, sure that she heard Ethan chuckling. She could hear Jerry and Marcy sniping at each other all the way from the stairs.
    “Maybe if you weren’t so busy nailing that adolescent who works for you, you might have noticed she was gone.”
    “I can’t find Kara’s computer,” Toni said, raising her voice to be heard over Marcy’s shrill commentary on Jerry’s choice of bed partners.
    “And if you weren’t drinking yourself to sleep every night, Kara would have stayed with you,” Jerry retorted before turning his attention to Toni. “What do you need with her computer? I don’t want you taking anything from this house.” He punctuated his words with a mean look aimed at Marcy.
    Toni bit back her temper. “I was hoping to get a look at her recent e-mails, chat logs, stuff like that. Since she’s not answering her phone, it’s our best way to find out if she made plans to meet someone last night.” She took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose as fatigue washed over her. She’d been on that stakeout until almost three a.m. and had barely clocked four hours of sleep before Marcy called. She wasn’t in any shape to fight Jerry Kramer every step of the way.
    Time for a different approach. She turned to Marcy. “Speaking of her phone, did you sign her up for the chaperone service I recommended?”
    Marcy looked at her blankly, and Toni had a bad feeling that that conversation had been sucked into the boozy haze Marcy lived in these days.
    “My phone,” Toni explained, “Remember how I told you it has a GPS unit embedded inside. As long as my phone is turned on, my location can be tracked.” She turned to Ethan and Jerry. “I recommend that all my clients with kids sign them up. Makes situations like this much easier to resolve.”
    “I completely forgot,” Marcy said, thin shoulders collapsing.
    “It’s okay,” Toni said tightly. Of course this couldn’t be that easy. “It doesn’t work if her phone is off, anyway.”
    Marcy’s face crumpled into sobs. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, burying her face in her hands. “I should have been on her more, but she was always telling me to leave her alone. I thought I was giving her what she wanted by giving her space.”
    It was a familiar refrain, one Toni had heard too many times. Parents who cared more about being their kids’ best friends than acting as authority figures. That’s why they hired Toni to snoop on them, because they couldn’t figure out how to just sit down and talk with their children. It was